If you’ve been patiently ready for Meta to place the ending touches on the upgraded Quest 3 VR headset, and even for those who’ve been ready impatiently, we now have excellent news. The firm has introduced that the Quest 3 be popping out on October 10, with pre-orders dwell accessible as we speak at stores like Best Buy. At $499.99 it’s considerably dearer than its predecessors, however nonetheless the most affordable strategy to get into the present technology of VR gaming by far.

The big change for the Quest 3 is the addition of full-color, high-speed cameras to the outside of the casing. While the Quest 2 allowed you to “see” by means of its monitoring cameras, the low-res, black-and-white image was actually solely helpful for stopping your self from hitting a wall (or catching your mates making impolite gestures whereas your eyes had been lined.) The new digicam setup permits for much extra instant interplay with the world past your headset, to not point out a brand new give attention to augmented actuality apps and video games.

Other huge modifications to the design embrace new hand controllers that don’t want the sensor ring, a 40 p.c thinner physique enabled by pancake lenses, enhanced 2064×2208 per-eye decision, a better subject of view, louder open-air audio system, and a extra highly effective Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 processor. (Yes, XR2 Gen 2. Nice work, Qualcomm.)

Though it’s primarily designed as a stand-alone gadget, the Quest 3 may even connect with PCs for gaming with extra highly effective visuals. That functionality, mixed with a low value, makes the Quest 2 the most popular VR headset on Steam, far outpacing Valve’s personal Index {hardware}.

Meta is betting huge on that expanded augmented actuality performance being a win for the Quest 3. And it actually wants one. Despite promoting greater than 20 million Quest headsets since buying the Oculus firm and VR know-how, Meta is burning through billions of dollars chasing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse ambitions, which don’t seem to appeal to anyone else. That’s not a terrific place to be in, particularly with Apple poised to enter the market on the excessive excessive finish with its Vision Pro headset next year.